


Once Upon a Tumblr

by keire_ke



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Doctor Who Crossover, IN SPACE!, Kisses, Mansion Fic, Multi, Teapots, fox and hound, master chef AU, owlet and duckling, penguins and lemurs, zoo au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2017-12-05 07:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 15,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keire_ke/pseuds/keire_ke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various drabbles and/or ficbits which have happened and continue to happen on Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Angriest Owlet

**Author's Note:**

> [Goes with this post on Tumblr.](http://keire-ke.tumblr.com/post/45138781531/theletteraesc-academicgangster) Because cute animals ahoy!
> 
> Kudos and adoration to Winterhill, the author of the most inspiring bird AU this side of fandom. :)

Erik thought he was doomed when the human captured him. He heard what they did to birds they caught, oh yes, he did, so when he fell out of his nest straight onto a human he clawed and thrashed and pecked them hard as he could, because they would never, ever take him alive.

“Oh goodness, look how cute it is!” the human said, holding him between two fingers. “Ow!”

Erik squawked in triumph at the taste of blood, then squawked again, in panic, when the human flailed and threw him against a tree. He hit the rough bark with his head and slid down in a daze. The forest spiralled around him, round and round and round, and the human was still there, the human was taking him prisoner and Erik was too weak to fight back.

“Oh god, I’m so sorry!” the human was babbling incoherently, and Erik thought, “this is it, the human will eat me for dinner, I will never see the forest again, I will never learn to fly,” and he let out a pitiful whine.

“Don’t cry, everything is just fine,” said the human, poking Erik’s juiciest bits, the dreadful owl-eater. How dare it! “Nothing seems broken. You fell out of your nest, yes? No worries, I’ve got you.”

Torture followed; Erik had been wrapped in a white human-fluff and tucked under its wing in total darkness, then carried for miles, far from his tree, from his home; he didn’t make a sound. No, he wasn’t going to give his captor the pleasure of seeing him beg. He huddled as best he could and bid his time, ignoring the dreadful headache. Hitting trees was ill-advised, he told himself, best to be avoided in the future.

Finally, after many, many hours of humiliating bobbing up and down under the human’s wing, Erik finally saw the sun, of sorts. It was a weird sun: very small, gave off hardly any heat at all, and the light was a weird colour. The human gave no notice to the strange hollow sun. Instead it placed Erik, still incapacitated (curse human cowardice!) on a cold slab, which went beep. 

“Release me and fight like an owl, you pathetic coward!” Erik cried, struggling against his bounds, alas, human-fluff was strong. Erik had to admit, grudgingly, that his claws were no match for it. Curse nasty humans, he thought, and started pecking the slab instead.

“You are so cute,” the human said, and used a black feather to flash light into Erik’s eyes. “There. Like a little owl-burrito! Just one more thing, and I’ll unwrap. You can have a bath and some seed, won’t that be nice?”

Erik surmised the human intended to use its strange spells to kill him, but he was an owl, he wouldn’t let the spells get to him. The human picked him up then, and this was it, he was going to be eaten like all the chicks which fell from their nests, he would never see his nest again—  
—and then he was free. Erik fluttered his wings and looked around. He was standing on green grass, the sun, the real run was overhead, too bright to even think of looking at it, but Erik was reasonably certain this was the sun. He could see no trees to hide under, but maybe that’s what humans did with birds they ate, just to crush their spirits. Erik sat down and fluffed himself up. Fat chance, human!

Far to the right there was a clump of something yellow, something alive, and Erik tensed, in preparation for a fight, but as the fluff waddled closer he saw that it was an owl also, a yellow owl with a deformed beak and no talons on its feet. It wouldn’t last a day in the forest. Erik fluffed his sensible brown-and-beige plumage, which was invisible against tree bark, thank you very much, even more and glared.

“Quack,” said the yellow owl. “Hello, friend. How are you on this fine morning?”

Erik glared at it. “I have been kidnapped and almost eaten by a monster. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“There’s no need to fear now. We are safe here. My name is Charles.”

Erik huffed.

“Don’t be like that,” said the yellow owl, who was called Charles, waddling even closer and putting its weird, flat beak on top of Erik’s head. Normally Erik wouldn’t tolerate this from any owl, but as it happened Charles had the fluffiest down on his throat and Erik’s head was still hurting, so he let it be. For now. “So what kind of a duck are you?” Charles asked. “I’ve never seen a duck with a beak like yours. Is it good for catching molluscs?”

Erik realised this was going to be a long, long afternoon.


	2. Whisk Until Smooth and Creamy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erik is one of the three chefs hired to judge _Mutant Chef_ , a reality show where people get to showcase their sub-par cooking skills and get yelled at for failing. The second chef is Charles. The third is the problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happens when I overindulge in _Master Chef_. [Has art to go with it.](http://keire-ke.tumblr.com/post/45221898970/erik-didnt-much-like-meeting-moira-this-is)

To say Erik didn’t think much of meeting Moira would be an understatement of the century. It didn’t help that he met her on the first day of filming, when they were supposed to judge a hundred of random dishes, cooked in garbage cans by one-armed raccoons, and their resemblance to cuisine. Oh, he shook her hand once the cameras were off, smiled and offered a “how do you do?” a queen would find acceptable, if dry, but he followed it up with turning to the producer, with Moira standing right behind him, and glowered. 

“This is _Mutant Chef_ ,” he said, but it was only by virtue of remaining in acceptable decibel range that this particular verb could be used. Erik spat poison as easily as he turned geese over a low fire until crispy. “What the fuck is she doing here?”

“Judging,” Raven told him with a roll of her eyes. “The surveys indicate mixed hosting…”

“Fuck surveys!” Erik drove a fingertip into an invisible enemy’s chest. “How do you expect people to take us seriously, when the likes of her are judging the food?”

This, unfortunately, caught Charles’ attention. “Erik!”

“She makes _pastries_ for fuck’s sake! What does she know about real food? Desserts are easy, just slap some chocolate on pears and you’re done, it has nothing to do with real cooking!” He went on to elaborate on the difference between a chef and the very same word with any dessert prefix, but even as he spoke he could tell he was losing Charles’ interest. It was in a direct relation with how quickly his face smoothed out into a polite disinterest in the proceedings, the face of a true English gentleman: one who would pick himself out of the pig sty, shake hooves with the head boar, then depart, possibly while subtly letting the farmer know he was certain he made the necessary goodbyes. 

Raven slapped a palm to her face and shifted into a dark-skinned girl, who stretched out her t-shirt, as she was wont to when annoyed. “Someone fetch Erik his strawberries, stat, he’s getting cranky.”

“No, really, I’m certain Erik has a perfectly good reason to dislike desserts,” Charles said. The polite disdain, oozing out of his every pore, lit a red light or seven in Erik’s head, but as usual, when the light lit up it was already on and Erik was screwed and not the way he liked to be screwed. “I’m terribly sorry, dear, I have a headache – I’ll just go and lie down for a moment. Some of the contestants were quite… loud.”

“That happens when you make people cry, you know,” Raven said drily. “On the bright side, Emma tells me we got one million viewers per crying contestant, so we are doing something right.”

Charles winced. “Nevertheless, the experience is… jarring, in retrospect.”

Yeah, no kidding. Erik was only as telepathic as sensitivity to electromagnetic waves could make a man, and even he could feel the pulsating, jagged anger in two of the chaps they rejected. Then there was the chick which exploded and charred the fillet mignon, which, really, escorting her out of the building under supervision was a mild punishment, as charring a fillet mignon should be a capital offence. 

“Do you want me to fetch you a pill?” he asked, mentally offering up a massage.

Charles frowned. “Thank you, but this is a headache only a copious amount of chocolate can fix. I’ll be in my room. Moira, thank you – I know relocation is hell.”

“Thank you for the invitation,” Moira said, nodding at Charles. 

Erik merely cursed.

Charles didn’t answer his knocking, and proceeded to ignore him, so Erik stalked back to his suite, scaring the life out of a hapless intern along the way. About an hour of soul-searching and behavioral analysis (well, punching a cushion he was levitating by the zipper) later, he put on his big boy panties (he liked to punch cushions in the nude – you never knew when Charles would stop sulking) and knocked on Moira’s door.

“Hey. Look, I don’t like you and you don’t like me, but I need your help.”

“I’m really completely indifferent, just because I think you’re a total asshole doesn’t mean I don’t like you. Or can’t ever like you.”

“Yeah, well, I still don’t like you. And I think we should have gotten a real chef.”

Moira scowled. “I am this close to slamming the door in your coursecist face.”

Erik folded his arms across his chest, prepared to fight the issue. “A dessert is not a course. It’s a conclusion to a meal, the cherry on a sundae, to use a metaphor you might find familiar.” 

“Door. Slamming. In your face.”

Erik sighed. “I pissed Charles off. He won’t forgive me without a chocolate cake.”

“There’s a fancy chocolatier two blocks down. I’m sure they could help you.”

“I wish it was that easy,” Erik said, wishing for nothing of the sort. While his preservation instinct was a little loose, he could recognize a fuck-up once he was standing in the rubble. “Look, Charles is a colossal asshole; he won’t accept anything short of groveling and asking you for help is the best groveling he could think of. I know him.”

“That does sound like Charles,” Moira said with a sigh. “Well, you are in luck, I have a free evening. I can give you a recipe for a nice and simple cake, one that even you can’t blow. It’s a bit like making pasta; should be nice and easy.”

Erik scowled. “Help me make a fancy chocolate cake.”

“I just painted my nails.”

“This is a TV show, they pay seven people to stand by and do that for you.”

“Go spear yourself with a carrot, Lehnsherr.”

“As amazed as I am with your culinary vocabulary, I have to insist.”

“As amazed as I am with your sheer chutzpa, I have to tell you to go fuck yourself.”

Erik deflated, a little. “Please, MacTaggart. He’s been pissy the whole week.”

“Did you set any interns on fire?”

“Just because I floated his new server out a window and back…”

“Oh god,” Moira said, slapping her palms over her mouth. “Sean?”

Erik took this to mean she had met Sean Cassidy, whose primary mutation was being annoying, with a side-order of a voice which could shatter glass. “See? I had no choice, he was being annoying, but Charles has been sulking ever since. He made me apologize to the little bastard, can you believe that?”

Moira stared at him in utter disbelief. After a beat she said, “you know what, I will help you make that cake. With due respect to my own fingernails, mind.”

What she meant, Erik discovered half an hour later, was that she’d seat herself on the counter of the studio kitchen (which Erik commandeered because he needed it), and direct his movements while being supremely annoying. “Whisk it properly, it needs to be smooth.” She looked a little disappointed when Erik made the bowl turn lazily while the whisker worked at a rapid pace. “That is really useful, what you have there.”

“I would have preferred something to do with fire, myself, mixers are far more reliable than ovens.” A half-truth – Erik couldn’t imagine life without his metal-sensitive mutation, but he wasn’t lying when he said something fiery would make his life a little easier.

“If you say so.”

It took them close to three hours to make the cake, mostly because of Moira’s flawed sense of aesthetics and inability to recognize the necessity of edible golden flakes.

“Chocolate roses,” she said firmly, and nagged until Erik produced an array of soft, chocolate flowers, some of which resembled roses. More or less. “You could write ‘those are roses’ with icing, just in case. I’m sure your feeble efforts will be appreciated.”

“Go away,” Erik muttered. When the cake cooled and the white sugar paste was artfully arranged in folds down one side, he added, “Thank you,” which was a little stiff, but heartfelt. He hoped she appreciated his offering, because a repeat was… well, not unlikely, considering his temper. Charles did like cakes.

“No problem,” Moira said, sliding off the counter and into her heels. “You are a horrible human being, Lehnsherr, and your tendency to terrorize people into submission will end nowhere good, but I guess you are not completely hopeless in the kitchen.”

“Go suck a spatula, pie-maker.”

“Fry-cook.”

“Baker.”

“Kebab-fondler.”

“Cookie-cutter.”

“Call Taco Bell, I heard they are looking for people to fry their beef.”

Erik took the cake and walked out, because he didn’t have to take this language. He made his way to the seventh floor, where Charles had a suite, and knocked lightly on the door.

“I wasn’t kidding about the headache,” he said. 

“I know. I brought you cake.”

Charles eyed his creation with approval and not a small amount of triumph.

“—and if you presume to utter a word, I will smash it into your face.”

Charles’ mouth stretched in a devilish grin. “Now, now, darling, then you’d have to lick it off, and we both know you don’t much care for chocolate.”

Erik didn’t smash the lovingly-created cake into Charles’ face, but he did end up licking some off it off Charles body, which was probably more satisfying, in the long run.


	3. The Fox and the Hound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fox and the Hound AU. A rabbit was killed eaten in making of this fic.

Erik wakes when the thunder strikes a nearby tree. He sees and smells the fire, and that is enough to ignite panic within. His fur stands on ends and he bares his teeth, drawing frantic breaths for the suggestion of smoke and fire coming his way.

Instead he gets a lungful of hound. 

The fire becomes secondary (he tracks it in the back of his mind, nonetheless, because fire is pain-fear-panic that he can’t outrun, but the storm comes with heavy rain; the smoke is heavy as it drags along the branch and won’t get far), all Erik can think of is the hound; that there is a hound in here, between him and the exit, where is he, who did he bring, why is Erik not dead, there are no jaws closing on his neck, there is no pain and blood and fur in the wound.

“Calm your mind, my friend,” says the hound from somewhere by the entrance. 

If Erik’s whole fur wasn’t standing on end before, it would have been now. “I’m not afraid of you,” he hisses, digging his claws into the cold earth.

“Well, I’m not afraid of you, either,” says the hound. “Calm down. I caught a rabbit, aren’t you hungry?”

Erik says nothing. He bristles and crouches, ready to leap, but the hound is bigger than he is, and he is stationed at the narrow entrance to the hole, blocking the exit. The hound ignores Erik for the moment, limping instead towards a rabbit carcass off to the side and tearing into its meat. It’s a small rabbit, Erik notices. Hardly enough for a full-grown hound, and the hound doesn’t gobble it up whole, no: he tears off a whole leg and throws it to Erik.

“Here,” the hound says. “You should eat.”

Erik has pride aplenty, but hunger is a powerful motivator. He devours the offering in two quick bites, gnawing at the bone once he’s done. “Thank you,” he mutters stiffly, hoping the bone will muffle his voice. 

The hound whines, swallows a portion of the meat and nudges the offal in Erik’s direction, while he worries at the ribcage. The nudge is feeble and the bits sticky, so they don’t go half as near Erik as the leg did. The glistening heart is inches away from the hound, near enough that they will be breathing each other’s air if Erik goes for it. The distance is not so great Erik won’t be able to leap for freedom, in case the hound makes a sudden move, but it is close, and this is a hound.

He is so hungry though.

“I won’t hurt you, I promise,” says the hound, as if his words are any comfort.

“As if I wouldn’t be able to run.” Erik glares at the hound for presuming, but as he does he takes notice of the limp and the bloody scratches on the hound’s leg, at the tuft of red fur in the corner of his mouth and the ache in his own neck. He remembers, then, slipping on the river bank and plunging down a waterfall, as the bear on his tail roared. He remembers hitting something hard and the shock of cold water tearing into his mouth. He also remembers teeth closing around his nape and the cold certainty of death, which drags him into the boiling cauldron. “You pulled me out of the pond,” he growls, taking a few steps back. “Don’t try to lie!”

“Why would I lie?” The hound looks at Erik quizzically. “I did, yes. Now, I’m sharing a rabbit I caught.”

“Why?”

The hound looks down, at the eviscerated rabbit. “Oh. Well. I just… didn’t think drowning was nice.” He picks himself up slowly, trudges towards the back of the cave, and begins licking his injured paw.

Stupid hound, Erik thinks, he left the hole open. Now all he needs to do is leap and he will be out, in the horrible downpour, yes, but free. His paws itch to make the leap. His tail is lashing behind him, ready to go, even if it means being drenched. Of course, he needs to go hunting, right away. He’s had no food the previous day, and this day’s disaster meant he’s had no food today either. No food except the measly rabbit leg. 

Erik looks down at the bloody chunks on the ground and feels himself salivate. In the back of the cave the hound is carefully not watching him as he nurses his paw, so Erik swallows the tiny rabbit heart and the rest of the entrails, as well as picking the bits of meat still clinging to the bones. He licks his muzzle clean afterwards, noticing, rather belatedly, that he is rather cold and that the hound is shivering where he is curled on the ground. They are both still wet, as if anything could dry in this weather.

A couple more bolts split the sky. Erik spends the interim watching the hound not watch him, which is disconcerting. Eventually, and it is a very reluctant, very counter-intuitive eventually, he begins inching towards the hound, spine arched, tail lashing, one careful hobble at a time, reasoning himself out of it along the way. This is a hound, he thinks, yes, but a hound who pulled me out of a pond and gave me food. Besides, he is hurt. He can’t catch me if he’s hurt.

“You helped me,” Erik says when his paws bring him to the hound’s side, quite against his better judgement. “I owe you a debt and you are cold, but if you try to bite me, I will run.”

The hound looks him in the eye, whines in the back of his throat and lays his head atop his paws. He doesn’t look or smell defeated, not even close (Erik knows how defeated looks and smells, and this is not it), but he does look and smell sad, and well, hounds aren’t known for their cunning and deception. Erik lies down beside the hound, curling into his side. “I’ll stay while it rains,” he tells the hound firmly, and pointedly does not lets himself be lulled by the beating of the hound’s heart and the warmth of his side.

“Thank you, Erik,” the hound whispers, just as Erik is on the verge of sleep. A moment later he lets out a huffy snore, just as Erik sits up like he was bitten. 

_How does the hound know his name?_


	4. Lazy Sunday Mornings at the X-Mansion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sean gets woken up at an ungodly hour to take care of chores.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes place in a ‘verse in which Shaw stopped to kick corgi puppies on his way to Russia and Janos blew him into orbit, with Emma’s help, because nuclear holocaust is one thing, but no one will stand for the kicking of corgi puppies. Later they maybe joined the happy mansion family and lived happily ever after, yay!

Sean woke to insistent tapping on the inside of his skull. “Geddoff,” he told his pillow, and pulled the covers over his head.

The tapping didn’t go away.

“Whaaaat?” Sean whined in the end, not moving from his cosy burrow in the mattress. “It’s like fifteen minutes past dawn!”

 _It is_ , the professor agreed. _Which means Erik will be up any minute now._

“Whyyyyy?”

_We’ve covered this. It’s your turn this week._

“No, it’s not!” Sean sat up in his warm, lovely bed and glared at the wall opposite, even though he was vaguely aware that Charles’ bedroom was three doors down and one story down from his. “My turn isn’t for two weeks!”

_You traded with Hank this week, remember? He made dinner on Tuesday and Thursday._

“Okay, this is not fair, dinner is not worth it. Not even two dinners.”

_Promises of pie were involved._

Sean was ready to scream and yell and complain, but there it was, right there, in black and white. Pie was worth it. Hank made good pie. But bed was soft and Sunday was sunny, Sean saw no reason he should be getting out of bed at this hour.

 _Pie_ , Charles reminded him.

“Come on, man! You promised there would be no ritual sacrifice involved, I asked! Specifically! I asked, ‘will there be some sort of advanced martyrdom training, Mr Xavier, or human sacrifice, maybe’ and you said no.”

_You also said it amounts to the same thing, in the end, which I denied. Furthermore, I said martyrdom is wholly optional, but welcome, if you recall, and really, Sean. This is a chance to expand your horizons!_

“’s bloody sadism, is what it is,” Sean muttered as he looked for his pants. It was already five forty-eight – Erik would be up in less than a quarter of an hour, which meant Sean had to be ready and waiting at his door, studiously watching the carpet, pretending he didn’t see Erik stride out of the Professor’s bedroom like he owned the place. Long story there. Many freakouts and awkward meals, with Erik threatening to eviscerate them all hrough their nostrils with his eyebrows. Anyway. There was a pair of pants and a tee, which may have been inside out, but seriously, fuck it, Sean thought, swallowing a yawn. He glared at the mirror, tousled his hair, staring down the comb in defiance, and trudged down a flight of stairs. He propped himself against a wooden panel and waited, listening for the muffled voices on the other side of the wall. He had a good ear, like, bat-good, but the Xaviers build their houses to outlast the sun, so he could hear shuffling and vague notion of human vocal cords vibrating, but not the words.

Erik finished dressing, clearly, because Sean heard Charles raise his voice a notch and say, “I’ll be along shortly, if you could put the kettle on,” then the door was swinging open and Erik was out.

“Hey,” Sean said, blinking his brain into submission and coming up with a carefully prepared gem of: “I was thinking, you know, the flying thing – you did have a point, with the landing. I just dunno, I am fucking something up there, right?”

Erik gave him a long, pointed stare. Like, razorblade thin, Xavier bank-account long stare. “You got up at six in the morning on a Sunday to tell me this?”

“Who screeched himself stupid about hammering stuff while it was hot, ‘cause I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me,” Sean said, slamming his temple into the wooden panelling by sheer fucking accident. “I had a thought, right, and I figured I’d try, but no one else is awake at this hour, and I don’t really wanna spend my Sunday lying in a ditch with a broken spine, ‘cause nobody was making sure I don’t break my head.”

“How long have you been living with a telepath now?” Erik asked, rhetorically, and led the way to the kitchen, where he made a pot of coffee and put the kettle on, which Sean took off the heat when Erik’s back was turned. Sean took his coffee like a big boy and took one for the team, risking life and limb to keep Erik out of realising no one but Sean and Lord of All Things Unnatural and Wrong was crawling out of their Sunday-induced cocoon until noon, if they could help it.

Think of the pie, Sean told himself, as he stood on the elevated platform and spread his wings, so to speak. Think of the pie and not how comfortable the traitorous bastards are, back in their soft beds. Think of the pie.

“Are you going to jump, or do I have to come up there?” Erik yelled, and Sean, being a spectacular team player he was, took the leap.

 _Thank you_ , Charles whispered from the comforts of his bedroom, as the air rushed around Sean’s head and howled in his ears. _From all of us. We honour your sacrifice._

Pfft, Sean thought, and attempted the first of many landings.

“Not bad, which is by no means good,” Erik said. “Again.”

Sean was beginning to hate Sundays.


	5. “Why didn’t you block my sword?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Swords aren't blocked and people die. :(

“Why didn’t you block my sword?” Erik kicked a rock and howled when the kick echoed in his knee. “FUCK.” He kicked it again and again, until finally it dislodged from its snug hole in the ground and sailed a total of three inches, towards a bigger rock. 

“I wouldn’t kick that, if I were you,” Charles said, more towards the rock than Erik. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

“Why didn’t you block it?!” 

Charles let out a long sigh. “I thought…” he began, carefully tasting the words he planned to say, “I think I needed not to.”

“You needed not to! What the fuck does that even mean?”

“It means it was important that I didn’t block the sword.” Charles sagged against the rock and stared at the sky. 

“Bullshit.”

“Come now,” Charles smiles weakly. “Didn’t the cause advance? You can get some excellent mileage out of killing me, don’t tell me otherwise. Hank will see to it.”

“That is not the point!”

“Really, darling.” Charles grasped Erik by the elbow and pulled him down. “You’d think your world is ending.”

“It’s not like you did me any favours.” Erik huffed and rolled his eyes, but sat down and nudged Charles’ knee to the side to make room for his own legs. “Seriously, you rolled a fucking twenty, you could have blocked me with your hands and it would have worked!”

“I didn’t know whether I would roll high enough, with all your plus fives, and I thought Az needed the healing more than I needed my half-elf.”

“What Az needs is a kick up the arse.”

Charles snickered. “Really?”

“Now all you’ve got is that elf-thief and the orc. Fuck, Charles, we needed F’Ancis on this quest. I don’t see Az being of any help whatsoever, so of course you needed to sacrifice your dumb arse for the halfing. Moron.” Erik let that out with a pronounced rolling of eyes, which Charles countered with an elbow to the ribs.

“Give him time. Halflings are full of surprises.”

“Yes, thank you, I have never even heard of _Lord of the Rings_ , tell me more, oh master.”

“Do I detect a subtle note of sarcasm?”

“If you detect subtle, something’s wrong with your sarcasm detector.”

“Honestly, I think you should give Az a chance. He’s trying, it’s not his fault he’s got zero experience. He’s learning. Raven was just as hopeless, or more, when she was getting started.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t have to sacrifice F’ancis!”

“Aww, did you like F’Ancis?”

Erik coloured a little. “He’s useful, that’s all. Rolls a lot of fifteens.”

“Well, Pembroke does almost as well and he’s a full elf. I’ve had some ideas how to use the unfortunate accident, if you have a minute?” Charles beamed and burned out all the righteous anger that Erik carried in him since they left the session.

“Hit me,” he said with a weary sigh, but when Charles began unveiling his dastardly schemes, he brightened like a evil sorcerer on a trail of a soprano princess. “You know, for a bleeding heart you are pretty ruthless,” he said. “Why aren’t you the Game Master, again?”

“Oh, it’s much more fun to pull the strings without actually holding them,” Charles told him. “Now, do you fancy a bit of a drink?”

“Always.”


	6. The Mouths of Babes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles gets a visitor, then an important call. He abandons the former to chase after the latter. The visitor is stuck babysitting. (post-canon)

Magneto gathered his majestic cape about himself and stared into the darkness ahead from under his imposing helmet. Things were peaceful now. There were skirmishes and battles, but they have been conquered and he stood victorious on the rubble, surveying his…

Shit, no, wrong mental narration. Erik was standing over a street on which there was rubble, true, and he had his helmet and his cape, which was lightly nipped at by the wind, but the darkness was not total, there was a balcony between him and the street, and the peace left much to be desired. For one thing, there was a persistent tugging at knee level, upsetting the precarious folds.

“I like your blankie,” said the instigator of the tugging.

“This is not a ‘blankie.’ There is no such thing as ‘blankie.’ The word is blanket,” Erik said, still staring ahead, lest the child bewitch him with its uncanny mutant powers.

“Blanket,” the boy repeated. “What’s your name?”

“Magneto.”

“Daddy didn’t call you that.”

“Your father says a lot of things.” He also doesn’t say a lot of things, Erik amended silently. For instance, and here’s a wild example out of nowhere, there was this delicious crumb of lack of information: Hi, Erik, what are you doing in DC, Erik, this is my child, Erik, it is three and a half, Erik, say hello, child, you who have sprung from existence out of a cabbage patch and none of your business, Erik, incidentally, how is your taking over the world going?

“He does say a lot of things,” the child agreed, and it was strangely delighted by what Erik deemed to be the most irritating phenomenon in existence. “Daddy is very smart.”

“If he’s so smart, how come he’s in a wheelchair?” Erik muttered to himself, sitting on the squashy sofa of internalised guilt and poking at its cushions.

The child frowned. “That’s mean. You’re not allowed to say that!”

“Why? He is in a wheelchair.”

“That’s just because his legs don’t work.” The child – Erik had been reliably informed it was a boy, and that he had a name, too, which he couldn’t recall as being David at the moment – was actually growling at him, from an unimposing height of what, two feet? He had yet to get up from where he was sitting on the carpet with a book. “You’re wearing a potty. You’re a potty-head,” he added. “A mean potty-head. And you wear a blankie. Only babies wear blankies.”

“The word is blanket.”

“I want daddy.”

“Your daddy went to get himself blown up. He’ll be back shortly.” Erik folded his cape around his shoulders and glowered at the world, though not at the child at his feet. He needed to get out of there, soon, and he would, the moment a vaguely responsible adult wandered by. Not Emma. Emma was not to be left alone with children. Not Mystique, either. If there ever was a mothering contest, Mystique would be runner-up for Keep Away From Children award, on the basis that she had yet to smother one. Charles might have had a point, sending her away before he opened his school. Erik was vaguely considering the wisdom of gently hinting to Mystique that condoms were an absolute must, when he felt a distant tremble in something large and metallic, and then an explosion. It wasn’t close enough to be felt, not in a non-magnetic sense, but its nature was undeniable.

The boy started crying. “Dah-ddy!” he wailed, leaping to his feet and wobbling towards the balcony. “Daddy!”

Erik caught him around the waist before he could get outside and hefted him up, along with a fold of his cape David grabbed on his way up, until he held the squirming bundle to his chest. “Calm down!” he kept saying, over and over again, stroking David’s back. “Shh. Calm down. It’s all right. It’s just an explosion.”

It was too far to reliably tell if anyone was near. The most Erik could tell was that it was a vehicle of some sort, probably a large car. As it were, Charles left in the Blackbird, which was way bigger, and entirely too fast to have been that close without Erik being aware of its every molecule.

“But you said daddy went to get blown up!” the boy lifted his head, staring at Erik with his huge blue eyes, and Erik cursed his own stupid mouth. David even had floppy dark hair and freckles on his nose, as well as the peculiar set of lines on his chin whenever he pursed his lips.

“I was lying. He’s on a plane. Hank made the plane, and things Hank makes don’t just explode.” Unless it is in his face and possibly his bloodstream, he added in the privacy of his own helmet. So maybe they should worry.

David continued to sniffle. “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar.”

Erik sighed. The little bastard had better not get any of his snot on his best cape, he thought, as quite against his better judgement he began patting the boy’s back. Then he noticed the edge of the helmet was digging into David’ cheek, so he took it off. It wasn’t like Charles was actually around. “Stop crying,” he said, levitating the helmet to a table by the sofa. “Everything will be fine.”

Whoever was busy blowing up cars continued to do so, so Erik huddled on the sofa, wrapped the little boy in his cape and held him close. “Alles wird gut,” he said, over and over again, even as the sporadic explosions continued. There was no real danger; whatever was going on was probably the work of Erik’s own people, but try and explain that to someone who felt “potty-head” was a legitimate insult.

*****

Charles returned, unharmed if a little frazzled, a few hours after he departed. In his hotel room he found Erik, asleep on the sofa, with the infernal helmet on the table. David was swaddled in Erik’s cape and tucked closely to his chest, with one hand tugging on Erik’s collar.

“We should take a picture and sell it to _The Times_ before Davie develops powers,” Alex muttered under his breath. “Big scary mutant supremacist likes cuddling human children. He would never recruit anyone ever again.”

Charles half-agreed. The photo was taken, but it wasn’t sold. A good thing, too, as most of its blackmail value will have become a moot point by next summer. Maybe one day he would show Erik a copy though.


	7. Cogs, Rivers and Bowties.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Based on this gifset](http://keire-ke.tumblr.com/post/47552606488/kianspo-starrose17-the-doctor-babysits). 
> 
> On a quiet night little Charles Xavier finds a surprising guest in the living room of his house.

“Bad idea, bad idea, bad idea!” the man wearing a bowtie was waltzing around the living room, with both his hands framing a very statuesque – and lively – invisible partner. It was an odd choice, considering the music playing was a Chopin's nocturne.

Charles disagreed. Or rather not so much disagreed as didn’t feel qualified to comment on the moral alignment of an idea. As far as babysitters went, however, well. Mother’s mind was round and waxy, like an apple, and Charles’, to the extent to which he was able to judge the qualities of his own mind, was like a river flush with winter’s melted snow; it was no wonder he slipped her mind as easily as he did. It wouldn’t be the first time he was left in the care of one who proclaimed to be a mature, responsible adult (which, Charles has long-learned, was a dead-giveaway that the speaker in question possessed none of those attributes).

“How old are you?” Charles asked, out of idle curiosity, as the man began fiddling with his front teeth. Charles would be the first to admit he didn’t know that many people, so his pool of viable comparison was small, but already he could tell this was not an ordinary mind. All the people he’d met so far were more or less straightforward: there was the topmost layer, firmly defined, words and clear images, then there was the pool of a background landscape, through which half-formed thoughts and pictures wafted, then there were the tunnels. Charles preferred to stay out of the tunnels, but could still see them, twisting and turning underneath. 

This man had covered the tunnels and caves and grottos of his mind with gears and slides and flowers. That in itself was nothing remarkable, most people did that. The strange thing was that in his case the erected structure was huge, like nothing else on Earth; planet-sized cogwheels turned, making the clockwork shimmer in their breakneck speed, as the oil that poured continuously to cool the machinery down slipped from one slanted surface to the next. Something like that would take many, many years to build, Charles thought, attempting the mental equivalent of poking an oily cog. Most people only ever managed a wristwatch, in the event they built something at all – a majority just let the undergrowth develop on its own – this was a forest of interconnected clocks, the springs of each triggered a cascade of activity elsewhere.

The man startled at the contact; he jumped, tripped over the sofa, and fell onto his back. “Bad idea,” he told Charles, scrambling to peer over the backrest. “You see. Bad idea. Wanderers get their fingers caught. Yes.”

“Nothing happened to me,” Charles pointed out sensibly. “How old are you?”

The stranger kept on looking, like he could see the river inside Charles shimmer and engulf the bowtie-shaped rock. “I should leave. Bad idea! Bad plan! Should have checked, why didn’t you check!” he yelled at the ceiling. “Little psychics don’t come out to play, no no no. Not now, certainly not now!”

Charles followed his gaze and found nothing. Except then he did: there was fire in the man’s mind. A swallow-shaped spark was alighting on the cogs which the oil didn’t touch, fluttering onto the next, towards the rim, until a fresh wave of the fragrant substance chased it away. Charles smiled, and once more held out a hand. He didn’t get close enough to touch, but the swallow turned to look at him, beat its wings—

“Nononononono!” The man leapt over the couch and shook Charles by the shoulders.

And then the room was filled with noise, through which the soft, heart-breaking nocturne fluttered like a dying songbird.

“Time to go!” the man said, striding towards the window and opening it wide. “Time to go, yes, repairs? Oh, brilliant. Brilliant indeed. Have a good night, little psychic boy.”

“You have to take me with you,” Charles said, cutting through another dance. The man stopped with one leg in the air, high over a footrest. “You have to. I’m only ten. You’re not supposed to leave me alone for the entire night. I could accidentally hurt myself, or fall off the stairs, and there would be no one to call the ambulance. Many accidents happen at home, you know.”

“Ah, you see—“

“You said you are a babysitter,” Charles said flatly. “I know you didn’t lie, because lying is bad.”

“Lying is very bad,” the man agreed, looking between Charles and the lights flashing in the window panes. In the back of his mind the winged spark of flame was carried away on a rollercoaster, into the thick branches of wire.

“That’s how I know you didn’t lie,” Charles finished with a sense of triumph. “I have to be back by morning though, or else Mother might worry.” The inclusion of “might” in most clauses made for an excellent way to avoid lying, Charles found. He didn’t like lying. It felt slimy.

“That won’t be a problem at all,” the man said. He grinned and the machine that was his mind glittered and turned, until the hands were pointing out, towards the sky of starry daffodils. “Tell me, little psychic boy, did you ever see a star be born?”


	8. Penguins of Westchester

Every fuck-up in this job happened on a Friday. Seriously, no lie, Raven thought, it was like there was a giant clock wound up in the DNA of every living creature, set to ring the fuck out of her brain every Friday. She’d hear nothing all week, hell, the temperamental old lion would let her scratch his tummy when she approached him with a broom, and then it would be Friday and he’d get into his head he’s some sort of superhero and start clawing everything he could reach, until someone caved and dropped a can of beer into his cage. Lions, really. She’d always said naming him after one of the meanest fuckers in the animal kingdom was a mistake, but hey, who listened to the twenty-two year old prodigy. She’s just sweeping the cages, that one, no need to consult the kid brought up in fucking zoos all over the planet by a couple of hippie cuckoolanders.

Stupid frigging bastards.

She’d have thought she’d seen everything, and hell, this zoo was crazier than most. There was the one-eyed elephant, for one. How the bastard managed to get a bald eagle, a reindeer, a fucking lynx, what the fuck, and a most offensively coloured macaw in his enclosure was anyone’s guess. Raven was deeply suspicious of the goings-on in the zoo. 

And yet, despite the fact that the elephant with ideas and a macaw with the ability to wiggle out of all enclosures were a pretty big thing, this Friday shit got realer.

“Jesus fuck!” Raven whimpered, sinking to her knees.

“What happened?” Hank, the only reasonable person in this whole establishment, rested his forearms on the concrete railing and peered down at the two small penguins, which were standing around the single bright spot on the ice-coloured floor. “They are even cuter than you said.”

“They are not cute! They are a nightmare! And now someone has dropped a feather into the penguin range, and my weekend is cancelled!” Raven dug her fingers into the back of her head and moaned. “I will find whoever did this and I will skin them.”

Hank adjusted his glasses and peered at the odd couple of birds. “Why is this such a big deal?”

“Because of the lemurs!”

Hank absorbed that with polite disbelief. “Lemurs.”

Okay, Raven was the daughter of people who liked animals more than normal people liked their own children; she had photos of herself at two, riding a Bengali tiger, another at six, with one foot in the mouth of a killer whale, one at three, with tarantulas all over her torso. She played fetch the lions and the cheetahs; she counselled parrots and consoled pandas. She had tea parties with orang-utans, who taught her to stick the pinkie out, yet what she was about to say still sounded weird. “Yes. Our oldest lemur collects feathers. Don’t ask me why, we have three universities working on it. At first we thought it was a gift to the female, but he’s the one who wears them, and she mostly finds him amusing.” Sometimes Raven thought Emma wasn’t really a lemur but an owl. She’d spend most of her time sitting on a pedestal in the lemur range, with her paws folded, surveying, and cataloguing all that went on with her cold blue eyes. Sebastian might posture all he liked, but everyone knew who was really in charge of the lemur range. For one thing, most animals knew their own names, yet Emma never answered to Emma, and would only deign to cooperate if addressed as White Queen.

“Okay, but why is this a penguin-related problem?” Hank was asking, just as Charles inserted himself under Erik’s wing and cooed. This provoked two things: one, Erik nuzzled the feathers on Charles’ head with his beak, two, he started inching back towards the water, away from the feather, shooing Charles along.

Raven sighed. “Because Erik – the brownish one – has a vendetta against the lemur. Again, don’t ask me why. It started as soon as he arrived, and the exhibits were next to each other, so we thought maybe the lemurs were throwing things, and they were, but once we moved the lemurs it only got worse. Erik got violent and things got strange. Then the other penguin, Charles, arrived, he’s the one with the blue eyes, and it was better for a little while.” No shit, she thought privately. The amount of time the two spent on nuzzling and grooming was unbelievable. “Then it got worse. See, Erik got attached and he doesn’t like it if anything comes too close to Charles, and if the lemurs are involved, all bets are off.” Raven slammed her head down on the railing. “This is a nightmare. I will be cleaning this up for weeks!”

“What can they do?” Hank asked. “They are birds. Small birds.”

“Really funny, jerk,” Raven muttered. Obviously, Hank had never had a penguin coming at him in a pink Barbie car at full speed, carrying a smoking Coke can on the passenger seat. “Just for that, I’m calling you in for clean-up bright and early on Saturday.”

Down below Erik spread his wings and let out a piercing battle squawk. The other penguins echoed. Raven groaned and let her head fall down. You’d think a penguin battle cry would be cute and unassuming. It wasn’t.


	9. On Youtube Everyone Can Hear You Sing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For ninemoons42's prompt. :)

These are some of the things Erik Lehnsherr wouldn’t be caught dead doing:

I. falling for pick-up lines.

“So, did it hurt?” the guy asked, slurring every other syllable.

Erik stared at him, while raising a brow in slow-motion. Ridley Scott may have botched everything he ever touched in the last ten years, but he taught Erik everything there was to know about the use of slow-motion. It was particularly effective with facial expressions, adding an extra layer of incredulity to an already condescending aura. Lesser men had ran from this face, but this fellow, clearly lacking in fundamental body-language communications, took it to mean “did what hurt?”

“When you fell from heaven,” he continued, plastering his upper half to the sticky bar and grinning up at Erik with a set of acceptable teeth. He wasn’t completely unfortunate looking, Erik supposed, but really, those shoes with that pick-up line?

“Please return to your table,” he said, downing a fluorescent shot. “I can’t be seen with my targets prior to the hit.” He’d fished a quarter out of the pocket of his jacket and let it spin in the air, suspended between impromptu magnetic poles. There might have been a minor electrical discharge, for effect. All in all, well-worth the headache, as Erik had never seen a man make it through a dance floor so quickly, although since some musical genius had seen it fit to play _Poker Face_ , so maybe it wasn’t that surprising. Erik reached out with his powers and spun the spoon by the barkeep’s elbow. When she looked up, he nodded in the DJ’s direction. The barkeep rolled her eyes but went to work her magic.

“That wasn’t very nice,” someone said.

Erik didn’t turn to respond. “The fear of accidental breeding is not my concern, owing to the gay thing, but there’s no way I’m letting my genetic material touch anything that stupid, just in case.”

The stranger’s elbow landed on the bar close to the three empty shot glasses, and his mouth grinned. “How about me, then? I’m an astronaut, so you know I’m smart.”

Erik snorted. Yeah, as if. Over in his booth the DJ became the victim of some serious harassment, but what sympathy could there be for a man who plays Lady Gaga in a public space? None, that’s what. Erik shook his head and considered. He was here to get laid and he was behind schedule. There was the minor concern that doing a kid wouldn’t look good on paper, no matter which way it was cut, and stuff not looking good on paper had sunk more than one honest agent. Still, the kid was inside the club (the club had a strict carding policy, particularly with Erik in it – he wasn’t above carding everyone in it, if he got suspicious), and he was lovely. Erik felt the buzz of the alcohol and the light tingling which could only be a result of his harassed libido setting its sights on a promising ass. “There’s no chance the spinning coin is going to discourage you, I take it?” he said, mostly to fuck with his libido. The kid had a fine ass and a finer smile.

“Only if you tell me that’s the extent of it,” the guy said cheerfully, reaching out to snatch the shiny disk out of the air. “And even then I’d be impressed. That was a magnetic trap wasn’t it? I felt the discharge.”

Interesting after all. Erik took the kid home, on the basis that everything he said could and would be used against him, and enjoyed himself thoroughly that night, and once in the morning. Judging by the low-level hum of satisfaction rising from the other half of the bed, the pleasure was decidedly mutual, although now that he had a braincell to spare Erik found the metaphysical hum of satisfaction mighty suspect.

“I’m a telepath,” the kid said. “This is actually very interesting, from a scientific point of view, but your whole body is attuned to telepathy, did you know? Not in the reading thoughts capacity, of course, but there is a definite reaction,” he added in response to a vague grunted compliment, stretching like a very pricy cat and clawing at Erik’s pillow. “I can’t switch myself off very easily, see, so if I do this—“ he pressed his mouth to Erik’s shoulder and sucked lightly, the electromagnetic field generated in my brain is picked up by the nerve endings in your skin. And vice-versa, I can feel my neurons thrumming when I’m close to you. It’s almost like fucking on a washing machine, only better. In an MRI – oh god, you know the feeling MRIs give, it’s fantastic.

It felt pretty fantastic, Erik had to agree. Vibrating rings had just found themselves obsolete. Not to mention, the kid had a pleasant mental voice, soft, light and durable, which felt pretty good in itself.

“And I’m not a kid, thank you. Just one of those faces. My name is Charles.”

Whatever, Erik had thought pointedly, as Emma taught him, asking for phone number with the same mental jab. It arrived with a burst of delighted sense of strawberries, highlighted in red and small, yellow seeds.

“I’m going away for a couple of months, but I’d very much appreciate seeing you when I get back,” Charles said, lazily fishing in Erik’s head for his number, which Erik provided in block capitals. “Thank you.”

All in all, Erik didn’t appreciate lame pick-up lines, but he did appreciate cocksure bastards with matching wits, especially ones who liked to fuck and were good at it. This was the reason he typed Charles’ number into his phone and set the alarm clock two months ahead.

II. mooning.

“If I didn’t know you,” Emma said swiveling in her chair, “I’d say you were mooning.”

“Oh, go to hell.” It’d been two weeks since Charles. Erik was in no way affected. He certainly hadn’t started dividing human history into B.C. and A.C.

“Can’t. Azazel is out in Minnesota.”

Erik felt her cold mental touch waft past his frontal lobe. “I’m not mooning,” he said defensively.

“Certainly not,” Emma said, barely containing a laugh. “Speaking of Azazel, you know that woman he’s with now and then, Raven something?”

Erik did. Had in fact remembered her in the shower often enough, although not lately. “Blue and scaly. Very hot.”

“Aren’t you gay?”

“She’s a shapeshifter. Cocks are always an option.”

“Apparently she’s an astronaut. Currently she’s up on the ISS with the biggest bunch of dorks imaginable, and Azazel just sent me a link to their Youtube channel.” Emma opened her mail client, brought up an e-mail and clicked a link.

“That’s what he does in his spare time, watches dorks on Youtube,” Erik started saying, but soon forgot what was he about to think, because Youtube unfolded its welcoming clutches and there was Charles, floating upside-down, and grinning into the camera. He was wearing a form-fitting black turtle-neck with the NASA logo stitched over his left nipple. Erik took particular notice of the fact that the nipple was clearly outlined, out of scientific curiosity and no other reason, like a vivid and fresh fantasy involving pinching and licking and a good time overall.

But the fantasy would have to wait, because there was also something huge, blue and furry, yet still man-shaped, in the background, floating from one corner of the screen into the other and back, spinning lazily around its long axis. There was a guitar in its – probably his, going by the fact that a shirt was missing and the first comment was neither “boobies!” nor “won’t somebody please think of the children!” – paws and small, round glasses on his face. Erik snorted. Judging by the angles and what he happened to know about Charles’ stature, the blue fellow was six feet tall, yet all he inspired was the impulse to scratch behind his ears and fetch a saucer of milk.

“This guy should be crowned king of dorks. Last night he was doing introduction to molecular biology with sock puppets,” Emma said regarding Charles, “and not something whipped up for the hell of it, no, apparently it’s a coherent series which starts with DNA and ends up with protein structure.”

“You realize you just admitted to watching puppet shows.” Erik leaned over her, adjusting the volume. On the screen Charles folded his legs and floated across the screen in a lotus position, rotating to an appropriate vertical orientation.

“Quality puppet shows from outer space,” Emma corrected, maximizing the video.

“… and manning the guitar there’s our chief of technological research, Doctor Hank McCoy,” Charles was saying, as the blue creature lifted a paw to wave and anchor himself in mid-air. “So, here’s one for that special someone – you know who you are, and if you don’t, here’s the coin I stole from you.” A shiny quarter flashed between his fingers. “Take it, Hank.”

III. appreciating Lady Gaga.

The giant blue paw descended, striking a G-major, and Charles straightened. His pretty red mouth opened and out came the most ridiculous string of syllables known to gambling aficionados world-wide: “I wanna hold ‘em like they do in Texas Plays, Fold ‘em let ‘em hit me raise it baby stay with me, I love it.” He sung it slow and sensual and dragging the syllables, all the while staring straight into the camera and thus into the soul of whomever was watching the video down on terra firma. His hair was long enough to float in zero gravity, but nowhere near long enough to obscure his eyes.

Erik smiled thereby causing at least one heart-attack.

Needless to say, Charles’ phone rang the moment he fished it out of the depths of his locker in NASA headquarters, back on Earth.


	10. Penguins of Westchester, the prequel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven complained about the penguins being weird... this is what the penguins are up to, in their spare time.

"Sir," Azazel said, turning from the periscope, "we have code sixty-two."

Erik immediately leapt from the small pool in which he was plotting their newest operation. "Report."

"At oh-two-hundred Guard Raven went into the enclosure with a large box. She put it down and at oh-two-oh-two opened it. Then she stood back and waited. Following that she took the box and left."

"What was in the box?"

"It looks like a penguin, sir."

Erik shouldered his way to the periscope. Through the scratched lenses he could see a small, black shape, huddled on the edge of the pool, staring intently at the water. "Volunteers!" he said firmly. 

He was proud when every last member of his squad lifted a wing. After a further moment of observation (the stranger continued to gaze into the water, and Erik was starting to reconsider "intently". It was becoming sinister), he pointed to Angel. "Go forth and observe. Report any suspicious behaviour."

"Yes, sir," she said, and hobbled over to the pool, which connected to the one outside. Erik returned to observing the stranger with intent. Angel would stay out of his sight, as well she should, and when she returned with intel they could begin forming a plan of actions.

Angel returned fifteen minutes later. She emerged from the pool with an impressive jump and hobbled over the Erik, saluted and began her report. "It is a penguin, sir. A small one. He's not doing anything, just sitting there. There is a bucket beside him, and in the bucket there are mackerels."

The entire squad looked up, suddenly alert. "Mackerels?" Azazel asked.

"Mackerels," Angel confirmed.

"Mackerels!" said Janos, flapping his wings. "Mackerels!"

"Silence!" Erik hopped off the periscope platform. "Penguin your stations! Be ready to go into action at my signal. Mackerels in our enclosure belong to us, and if the stranger doesn't surrender the bucket, we will take it by force!"

A unanimous cheer erupted, though "mackerels" was repeated more often than "penguin pride", as it rightly should be. No matter. Erik fluffed himself up and dove into the pool, making his way through the tunnel which connected their headquarters with the pool outside. He emerged from the water at the shallow end of their island, sliding quickly into the shadow of the rocks. 

The stranger sat on the other end. Erik could see him, just barely, around the edge of the cave. The bucket was situated on his right, this he knew from observation through the periscope. Ha! He thought the hogging of mackerels could continue! Erik would never allow for a bucket of mackerels to be monopolised by the undeserving, even if they were a penguin, and not, say completely at random, a lemur. He shuddered. Lemurs.

Erik stood up straight, flexed his wings and signalled "I'm going in" to his squad.

He could only imagine how awesome he looked, emerging from the shadows, with his wings extended to the sides in a battle position. He was the leader of the best squad in the entire zoo, and soon this stranger was going to know it! He would surrender the bucket of mackerels and kowtow to Erik and his people, and pay them tribute for living in their enclosure, and…

The stranger turned and fixed Erik with a soft, blue stare. Erik flapped his wings a little, because he was a soldier, and this was a mission, and mackerels—

The strange new penguin had a very red beak. His eyes were very blue, bluer than their pool.

"Good morning," the stranger said, hobbling over to where Erik was standing. "Hello. The guard said there are more penguins here, I was worried she lied." His red little beak was so close Erik could only stare at it or his blue, blue eyes. "I have a bucket of mackerels, if you're hungry."

Their mackerels! Erik fluffed himself up, ready to ascertain that yes, he knew, and those were his mackerels, and his squad's, and he'd much rather take them all now, thank you very much, and this was also their enclosure, they owned it, and…

The stranger withdrew to the bucket and picked up one of the smaller fish and swallowed it whole. "They are really very tasty," he said, picking up another and hobbling to Erik's side and nudging it into his beak. 

Erik jumped back, with the mind-boggingly tasty fish hanging from his beak. 

"My name is Charles," the strange new penguin said. "What's yours?"

Erik swallowed the fish and told him, firmly, that names were irrelevant, he was to be addressed as "sir" or "chief" and he was the leader of a squad and would accept no less than total devotion and respect if Charles was to join – but that wasn't to say Charles was eligible, not every penguin made the squad, they were an elite team, after all. 

"'rik!" Charles said, flapping his winds in excitement. "I'm so glad to meet you, 'rik!"

"It's Erik," Erik muttered uncomfortably. 

"Well, do you want more fish, Erik? The guard is very nice, she said I can have the whole bucket, and I ate some, but there's still a lot."

Erik wasn't all that hungry. The fish he just ate must have been not quite dead because it was thrashing in his tummy and doing weird floppy somersaults, and it was so weird, so very weird, but Charles was looking at him, and flapping his wings, and occasionally his feathers would brush Erik's and his beak was really, really red.

He was starting to decide that maybe Charles could be trusted with a low-level clearance, when the sound of laughter reached his ears. He shot up to his feet immediately.

"Aww, look, there are more penguins added to the penguin population!" The lemur was standing on the wall which encircled the enclosure, with feathers in his fur and a smug grin on his face. "What're you up to, penguin?"

"Oh, we were having a nice chat, thank you, isn't it a lovely day? Are you a lemur? I saw lemurs on a picture once. Is it true you live in trees?" Charles said. "What's it like, being in a tree?"

The lemur paused, fixing his orange eyes on Charles, and a slow grin spread on his ugly face. He looked at Erik and grinned wider, then back at Charles. "Why don't you come here, and I'll show you," he said. "Nothing personal, but better animals get better enclosures, you understand. Trees, unlike the stinky old waterhole, are better. You seem like a reasonable penguin."

Erik raised his wings and let out a sharp squawk, signalling for his squad to assume battle stations instantly and defend the enclosure from the lemur invasion, while he threw himself at Charles and knocked them both into the water, down through the tunnel and into the lemur-proof headquarters, where he'd be safe.

Before he could be interrogated and possibly deemed worthy of joining the squad, of course. Maybe. If he proved worthy.

"What is happening, my friend?" Charles asked, blinking up at Erik from the pool. "What is this place?"

Erik went on to explain that this was the headquarters of the penguin army, that they had a sacred duty to protect the zoo and all the animals, because the people were mean and the lemurs were worse, and would Charles stay, maybe, and rule by his side, because he looked like the kind of penguin who'd be a good, sensible ruler, and Erik was ready to promote him to lieutenant immediately, on the strength of his evasive swimming manoeuvres alone. 

The speech was almost ready and Erik was opening his beak to deliver it, when Charles looked around and let out a small squeezing sound. "Oh, there's more penguins living here! Maybe they'd like the fish. I think we managed to drop the bucket into the water, excuse me." He disappeared into the tunnel, leaving Erik with his beak open and wings flapping uselessly, and he just wanted to say his peace, damnit!

Charles made a few trips, lining up the shiny, delicious mackerels on the edge of the pool, and then he got out of the water and shook, and his feathers were nice and slick and Erik was about to tell him so, but of course Azazel shot out of the water, closely followed by Janos and Angel, and they stood to attention reporting a complete success, which quickly dissolved into bubbly joy at the sight of the mackerels. The whole squad crowded around the silvery, delicious pile, thanking Charles and asking him things, and Erik flung his wings into the air and hobbled to the corner, where he could sit in silence and consider a new squad, a squad of fearsome warriors, not as easily excited by mackerels. 

Maybe bears. He could lead a squad of bears.

"There you go," Charles said, plopping the biggest, juiciest mackerel of the bunch on the floor in front of Erik. "I saved one for you; your friends look very hungry. It should keep for a while, if you're not hungry now."

Erik tried to say thank you. He did. But Charles was watching him and smiling with his red beak, and Erik wanted to hide and run, and jump over fences and subdue lemurs, as was his destiny, and snuggle closer to Charles and maybe adopt some eggs, and run away to the Antarctic, and preen his feathers.

Or something.


	11. Teapots, Afghans and Golden Afternoons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [[for Rohnoc]] Charles is followed by a sentient teapot.

The sepulchral house in Westchester was slowly coming apart, ages of solemn, unsmiling scions undone by the pitter-patter of tiny feet, claws, and, in one special case, hooves. Charles welcomed the noise with something akin to bliss, having grown in what was more suited to be a museum than a home. On the very best days, and he had more of those lately, he felt happy, something he wouldn’t have anticipated ever feeling when he was growing up. Outside, the group of children between the ages of four and fifteen was playing cricket, having decided to honor Charles’ English roots, despite the fact that Charles hadn’t seen England until he was sixteen and an estranged grandmother hardly counted as English roots.

The fact that none of them had the faintest idea how to play cricket didn’t stop them either, and if someone were to rightfully point out they were using baseball equipment to play baseball on the grassy field, with the sole concession to the noble art of cricket being that the ball had to roll on the ground, well, that person would have many unhappy, snotty noses to wipe.

Charles smiled to himself. The afternoon was golden and bright, and boasting colors he could swear he had never seen before: the trees were red and yellow and orange, the grass still green, the sky blue, and so the world, or at least the bit of the world that Charles owned, was beautiful and serene.

A muffled thump startled him out of his reverie, and he looked down to discover that his book had slid off his afghan-covered knees and onto the carpet. He should probably pick it up, before someone came in and made a fuss – there was no consoling some of the poor darlings – but for now he was just too comfortable.

Just as he was arranging a stray cushion between his shoulder, ear and the backrest of the sofa, he heard a soft shuffling by the door and then a click, as though something smooth and shiny came into contact with the polished wood. Indeed: the heavy door was nudged open a fraction and a fat porcelain teapot ambled into Charles’ study. It made it to the edge of the carpet, where it paused, lifted one of its six legs with utmost care, climbed the insignificant, but to small teapots and newly minted wheelchair users, step, and shuffled on, pausing before the dropped book. The base of the spout nudged it lightly, then the hind legs bent so that the tip was pointed at Charles.

“Don’t worry about it,” Charles said. “I got bored with reading, for the time being.”

The teapot let out a puff of steam.

“Oh, you brought me tea? How delightful. You don’t have a fresh cup by any chance?”

The teapot waddled in a tight circle, looking around the room, then finally stopped, pointing its spout at Charles in a gesture far more desolate than was proper of a little teapot with rosebuds on its belly.

“That’s alright, I should have something—Oh, there it is.” It took a little stretching and a frightening moment of the sofa trying to try its skills at rodeo, but Charles managed to retrieve a cup from the desk. “It smells delicious – is it Darjeeling?”

The teapot did a complicated little dance, bowed before the proffered cup and filled it to the brim, letting the fragrant liquid swirl on its way down.

“Thank you.” Charles spent much of his life building an addiction to milky Earl Grey and beer, but prolonged stay in the house opened his eyes to the wonders of variety. That, and gift baskets from some of the students, who spied on his tea-drinking habits.

The teapot, meanwhile, waddled to the coffee table and sat down underneath it, splaying its six legs in every direction.

“I know how you feel,” Charles told it. The teapot wiggled a little more than settled into a doze, breathing out a puff of steam now and then. Charles retrieved his book and began reading, sipping the delicious tea.

Sometime later, when the cricket game turned into an all-purpose game of team-tag with hastily appended rules (no flying, no super-speed, no turning into molten pots of lava, to name a few), there was a knock on the door. Charles looked up over the remainder of his tea to find a timid pair of eyes watching him from the shadowed corridor.

“Come in, darling. Can I help you with anything?”

“I lose your teapot,” she said mournfully. “I was playing and it ran. I look everywhere, but it is not there. Anywhere.”

“Oh, so it was you,” Charles said. “I thought so. No, no, don’t worry – it’s under the coffee table. It’s been bringing me tea.”

“Really?” the girl wiped her eyes and crouched on the carpet to get a better look at the offending piece of crockery, which got up and teetered, before running out the half-open door, obviously ashamed of having been caught empty. “That’s very nice.”

“It is,” Charles finished the last of his cup. “And the tea is particularly delicious.” As unnerving as it had been, to discover a fat ball of porcelain is shadowing his every move, Charles had learned to appreciate the fresh tea deliveries. “Come, sit here – would you like me to read you a story?”

“Story!” Wanda brightened and climbed onto the couch. “Story about witches?”

Luckily, such a book was ready on the coffee table, right over where the teapot had been resting. Wanda snuggled into his shoulder, with her shimmering mind pressed close to Charles’, as he began to read.


	12. Steamy Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For ninemoons42. :)

Okay, so, recent scale of awkward:

1\. waking up naked in the middle of an exam, discovering your whole class is also naked, realising it's all a dream, waking up with a boner, because wow, the TA has an ass to die for, discovering that you are, in fact, in class, and the TA in question is offering you an open box of sample HIV-awareness condoms,  
2\. accidentally inviting the TA in question to Farmville,  
3\. being tagged on a party photo in which you happen to be wearing boxer briefs and a blue cardigan which someone had found in class and brought to the party,  
4\. having the TA comment on the photo in question, mournfully saying goodbye to "his favourite sweater,"  
5\. waltzing into a sauna in your birthday suit, dropping onto a pine bench, then discovering the infernal TA perched in the corner, with his dark hair plastered to his sweaty forehead, his red mouth parted and pale skin glowing. Also unmistakeably looking at your dick, which may or may not have mustered a cheerful twitch at the sight.

Holy fuck, Erik thought. Houston, we have a class five disaster.

"Erik, nice to see you out of class," the TA said. Nothing about his manner suggested he was sitting on a wooden bench, stark naked, with one of kinda-his students (because it wasn't like Erik was some kid, right – for fuck's sake, Erik was teaching his own classes!) getting a culturally inappropriate yet biologically necessary reaction to his presence.

"Hi Dr Xavier," Erik muttered, wondering just how much of the blush he can blame on the steam and good old Celsius.

"I'm technically not a doctor yet, but of course flattery is welcome." His gaze continued to drill into Erik, who fought the urge to run and hide in the snow outside. That's supposed to be healthy, right, jumping into a mound of snow after getting out of the sauna? "Well, I think I've had enough. Always good to see you."

Xavier hopped off the bench and Erik Absolutely Did Not Look at his arse, and because he didn't look he couldn't tell that this was the arse (and let's be honest, also the dick, because unf) he'd be jerking off to in the near future, once he moved to Alaska out of sheer mortification.

Luckily for him, Xavier was wrapping the towel around his waist and waving goodbye, except now he was coming closer and bending over Erik and oh shit, oh shit, ohshitohshitohshit!!!

Erik might have shorted out a little, then a little more, when tongues became involved and his inappropriate yet totally understandable biological reaction became a whole lot more flagrant. 

"I would really appreciate not being sued for this," Xavier whispered into his ear, "but what I'd appreciate more is for you to give me a call after the exams."

He left, pausing to upend a cup of water over the hot stove, and Erik had to spend a very, very awkward quarter of an hour, talking himself out of a persistent erection while the steam around him clouded the door.


	13. Kiss on the Neck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For kageillusionz. :)

At some point in the near future Charles was going to have to sit down and think about his life choices, Raven always thought. Straight up, sit down and consider everything he'd ever done until that point and highlight the rampant thoughtlessness with a red marker, then despair, because it would be red all over, with an occasional flash of white around the time people get diplomas.

The bits were Erik came in would be so goddamned red they would be visible at night, with the fancy green goggles.

Because Erik? Erik was the weirdest motherfucker on the planet earth, and Raven knew a guy who painted himself red and glued a tail to his ass, for fun. Though in the light of recent developments, maybe the tail was real, who knew? Raven wasn't judging people for their fetishes, and hey, bodypaint was awesome.

Erik though… Charles first met Erik on his way back home from university lab. It was nine p.m., because that was how Charles rolled. Raven had met him half-way and they were going to dinner, when this giant fucking dog came out of nowhere and slammed Charles to the ground.

Then the fucker whimpered! As if Charles needed anything more to regress to the age of five, when he was first denied a puppy, and start cooing at the thing, which probably wasn't ever a puppy, but had sprung fully-formed from the belly of some Scandinavian god of weird shit.

Again: Raven was a fucking prophet. Because right then and there, when Charles was playing nosies with the giant beast from hell, she noticed that the dog-wolf-monster really liked nosing his throat and licking it afterwards, and she may have been a florist, but she knew enough about dogs to know this was not dog behaviour.

"Oh come on," Charles had said, while the dog tucked its nose to his carotid artery. "Human skin is salty, you know dogs like licking salt." The dog licked his jaw and panted in delight, trying to crawl down his t-shirt.

"You're thinking of deer, Charles, and this is not a dog."

"Of course it's a dog, we're in the middle of New York City! He has no collar; we should probably call the pound."

Raven capitulated. Between her brother, who gave her the puppy-eyes, and the dog, which was holding said brother hostage at tooth-point, she was losing ground. She had called the pound, reported a found giant dog, left the apartment door open, because hope sprung eternal, and instructed Charles firmly to lock his goddamned bedroom door, so help him god.

Then the full moon came grinning at their predicament, and all sense went out the window: the giant dog started stretching until it was a six-foot-tall skinny German, who spoke exactly zero English and smiled like he was starring in Sharknado.

_Of course_ Charles immediately declared they would do everything in their power to break the curse (a surprisingly swift hour later, owing to the genius of people behind Google Translate). "We'll be happy to help," he said with all the enthusiasm the city had to spare until March, grasping Erik's hand and typing up his sentiments with the other. "I'm sure we can work something out, curses exist to be broken, right?"

In Erik's defence (and Raven's too, because it wasn't like she was enthusiastic about the idea in the first place), his eyes went a little gooey when Charles' earnest promises filtered through Google. "Danke," he muttered, smiling shyly up at Charles and wow, Raven had heard the term "puppy love," but take her word for it: you ain't seen it, till you've seen it.


	14. Kiss Along the Hips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For rozf. :)

"You will notice I'm not exactly rolling out a red carpet," Charles said dryly, lifting a sheet of paper, giving it a cursory glance and pressing a neat stamp in the corner. From his perch at the window Erik could see the X in a circle, which dominated the design.

"I was hoping for a red carpet," he said, which even to his ears sounded weak, although that could have been the helmet's acoustics.

"Not in that get-up you weren't."

Erik frowned. "What's wrong with my clothes?"

"Where do I begin?" Charles finally let the seal rest. He looked up and taxed Erik with a pointed gaze. "Your shoes don't match the trousers. Your jacket is too big for you, and really, American cut? Someone with your figure should invest in a properly tailored English suit. Your cape matches neither the cut of the trousers, nor does it flatter the padded shoulders, and overall gives the impression you dressed in a hurry and hung a bed-sheet off your neck. Do learn the merits of draping. It's not like you need excessive mobility."

"I didn't come here to discuss wardrobe with you." Or excessive mobility. Erik wasn't ready for that conversation, not now, maybe not ever.

"Darling, it is patently obvious to me your wardrobe hasn't been a subject of discussion for a while." Charles picked up his pen again. "A shame, at that, because last time I saw Miss Frost she wore a very tasteful Channel suit. Not that I would recommend Channel for you, at this time, given their current collection, but Miss Frost is a woman of taste and her advice is worth considering."

"I missed you!" Erik all but yelled. After a moment of deliberation, all through which he felt Charles' gaze on his face, he slid the helmet off his head. "I—I really missed you."

"Ah. Is Raven not amenable to stripping for your viewing pleasure anymore?"

"Charles!"

"Well, what did you expect?!" Charles threw the pen onto the desk, where it circled for a moment, then fell to the floor.

"I was hoping we could work something out," Erik said, stiffly.

"This is not an argument we can solve with angry sex."

"I don't recall any argument we solved with angry sex."

"There was the one about the hotel in Illinois."

"As I recall it was less an argument and more you being placated into compliance."

"Well, I was hardly going to make the scene after we made a mess."

Erik stared at his helmet, red and smooth, lying on Charles' carpet. "I missed you," he said again, quietly. He felt the tendrils of Charles' mind brush against the thought, considering. "I missed you."

"Good thing you didn't miss the sex, because that's a bygone." No surprise that there was a sour note in Charles' voice.

Erik didn't quite decide to move, but he found himself dropping to his knees before Charles, with his hands undoing the knot of his bathrobe, then the buttons of his pyjamas. The wheelchair was just wide enough to allow him to nudge Charles' knees apart and fit himself in between. "Can you feel this?" he whispered, placing a soft kiss on his ribs. "Or this?" His mouth trailed lower. He could feel Charles shiver; he was proud to elicit a gasp when his mouth touched the jutting hipbone, an unfamiliar angle where once there was soft flesh. Nonetheless, he kept his lips pressed there, learning the curves anew, for the future they maybe still had.


	15. An Upside-Down Kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For mir-rcha. :)

The silence woke him up. Erik found himself prostrate on the ceiling of an airplane, a mundane, human thing, a metal cage for flying the undeserving high over the earth they would not keep, if Erik had anything to say about it, a misuse of steel—

Wait. The construction was metal, very obviously metal, yet he couldn't feel it. There should be a low hum in the back of his mind, connecting the bits together into a seamless whole, but there was nothing. Only a complete silence, save for the rush of blood in his ears. Erik pulled the helmet off his head and listened, desperate for anything, a twinge, a high A, anything.

"Good morning, Erik."

Erik spun in place, tripped over a timber and fell. Charles was still there, hanging upside down from what used to be a ceiling, securely strapped to his wheelchair, which in turn had been immobilised against a rail.

"Charles."

Silence reigned long enough to spawn and be succeeded by her lesser known cousin, the hush.

"I hate to ask favours, but I'm not feeling all that well." He didn't look too well, either. His face was red and eyes bloodshot, not unlike those first time in Cerebro, when Charles pushed himself to the very edge of his being electrocuted by his brain in an act of protest.

"Are you—" Erik swallowed nervously. "Are you unhurt?"

"I was securely strapped to my seat. You're the one who was playing pool with his head."

"Right." Erik didn't remember that part of the journey all that well; there was a vague memory of being inside a washing machine, but he had to have dreamt it. At least Charles was unharmed… Well, unharmed and upside-down in his wheelchair, for god only knew how long. "Something's wrong, I can't—"

"I know. I can't either."

"Right." Another moment of silence. "How should I…?"

"Oh, I had a moment to think this through. You'll need to unbuckle my legs first, then hopefully, if I'm not asking for too much, catch me when I unfasten the harness." Charles bore his eyes into Erik. "Then, if we're lucky, we can see about the wheelchair."

Erik nodded. The walls of the plane had enough protrusions to make climbing a walk in a park, even without his powers and with a giant headache. Working out the intricacies of Hank-designed harnesses, well, that was a little more complicated. Stupid Hank.

"Ready?"

"If I fall and break my nose, you're the one who's going to have to look at me," Charles said, bracing himself on Erik's shoulders and stretching his neck, until his lips align with Erik's for a salty, kiss. "Okay, ready."

Erik reciprocated with all the enthusiasm his concussion could scrape from the insides of his skull, which considering his recent abstinence, turned out to be quite the flow of enthusiasm. "On three?"

They hit the ceiling with a startled shout, making Erik's concussion just the tiniest bit worse. It was, however, nothing compared the heart attack he suffered when Charles groaned and then started hyperventilating. "Erik," he was saying, breathlessly, "I can feel my legs. I can feel my legs!"


	16. The Art Thief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For Rohnoc and this prompt right [here](http://keire-ke.tumblr.com/post/70427651832/rohnoc-youve-got-to-stop-breaking-in-and).
> 
> The most expensive piece of artwork in Charles' collection is stolen. The thief leaves a calling card.

The robbery didn't bother Charles overmuch. The stupid painting might have been priceless, but it was also ugly as the sin of talking at the theatre: no one liked it, the person responsible was unabashed, and it made the person booing it seem like an uncultured swine. Charles refrained from commenting every time art came up, but Sebastian Shaw was an old family friend, and decrying his work would be tantamount to disinheritance. As much as Charles liked to think he didn't care about the money, he cared enough, unfortunately, to know that earning it required honest work. He was a hard-worker, no questions about it, but his New York penthouse was expensive and a TA salary would cover, oh, the upkeep, if he fired the current crew and went poking through the dark recesses of the yellow pages.

Besides, it wasn't like it was a high price to pay for his private, luxurious home, having to live with a butt-ugly masterpiece on his mantle. He hardly used the living room, anyway.

So, the robbery was actually a blessing in disguise. It was so kind of the burglar, Charles thought with genuine emotion, as he watched the investigator inspect a piece of wire, masterfully twisted into a symmetrical band-like construction, hanging where the piece ought to be. An intricate wire sculpture was the calling card of the City's most notorious art thief. The insurance people paid up without a word, Mother apologised profusely to the artist whose life’s work had been defiled by unworthy hands, and Sebastian… well, he'd learn to deal without the painting he never got to see, anyway, because Charles tended to kill the lights and pretend he wasn't home when he felt the man approach.

Charles moved on with his life as best he knew how, dulling the pain of losing such a timeless work of art by throwing a party. Ostensibly it was to cheer Sebastian up, unfortunately Charles knew that throwing him a party was a sure-fire way to inspire, and so he was in no way surprised when, an hour in, Sebastian begged off with that special, manic glint in his eye. Charles could only hope he was running out of that expensive whiskey he liked, so he'd sell the painting rather than gift it, to replace the stolen one. He should be so lucky.

As Sebastian left, Charles became strangely aware of someone he didn't remember inviting. This wasn't a comfortable thought – Charles screened his guests carefully, an ingrained habit of the son of a man whose reputation was a perfect three on a scale of one through five, a man reviled and worshipped in equal measure. He was already skirting the edges of safety by teaching classes without a security detail, so he compensated by keeping his living space as private as he could make it.

Yet there it was, a foreign mind Charles couldn't account for. He moved to investigate, side-stepping the boisterous mountain of chiselled muscle, who was attempting to explain his complicated fraternal relationship to one of Charles' university colleagues, a petite brunette with whom Charles’d had the occasional conversation (conversation in this case meaning that Charles prattled about his research and Jane prattled about hers, with the conversation intersecting only when machine printouts could be confused for the other's).

The strange man was sitting on Charles’ white, leather couch, drinking a Bloody Mary, and staring up at the empty space over the mantle. He was a handsome fellow, Charles couldn't help but note, with a chiselled jaw and an intelligent look in his bright eyes. Something about his face seemed familiar, almost as though he'd seen the stranger before, which was enough to make him wary: he had enormous trouble identifying people he knew on photographs, let alone people he never met. This man's mind was wholly unfamiliar, sharp and glinting like glass, which meant Charles couldn't have met him ever before.

And yet…

"You remind me of the painting," Charles said conversationally, making himself comfortable on the opposite end of the couch, once his ability to match a square peg with a square hole finally came in useful.

"Oh?"

"It was stolen. Never mind. May I ask how did you get in here?"

"I was invited."

"Indeed?" Charles beamed. "It was Tony, wasn't it," he continued, nodding at Tony Stark, who was trying to outdrink the inoutdrinkable physics professor.

"He doesn't like to show up without an entourage," the stranger agreed.

"True." Charles shook his head and smiled. "And if it was any other party I would happily walk away, but since Tony is a good friend of mine I know he caters to my whims and doesn't bring people I don't know into my house."

The stranger didn't have the good grace to blush. Instead, he smirked. "I'm here for the drinks."

"All due respect, my friend, but you have thirty seconds to vacate the premises before I throw you out."

"You and what army, little boy?"

Charles countered the smug smirk with an innocent smile of his own. The man frowned and the hand holding the Bloody Mary rose to his lips. His Adam’s apple moved as the last of it went down his throat, and the hand lowered again. "Just me," Charles said quietly, relinquishing the mental hold and letting his mind expand, until he could be sure the man meant him no harm. "Oh."

"Are you going to call the police?" Erik Lehnsherr, the City's most prominent art thief, stretched and smiled. There was a touch less condescension in the smile now, a little more wariness; the magnificent glass structure grew steel vines and began to close off.

"Like they would catch you." The brief sojourn into the steel-and-glass mind was enough to tell Charles it would take more than the police force to bring Mr Lehnsherr to justice. Speaking of… "I kind of owe you, for getting rid of that masterpiece. I hated it."

Mr Lehnsherr stood and set his tumbler aside, so that he could perform a courtly bow. "My pleasure," he said, grasping Charles' hand and bestowing a kiss on his knuckles, "my lord."

He left without further ado. Charles let out a long breath, reached for the glass Lehnsherr abandoned and topped it off with vodka. He made a mental note to give the doorman a description of the burglar, to add to the _persona non grata_ list, because favour or not, manners mattered and showing up uninvited was in bad taste.

He was, understandably, a little miffed to find the burglar sitting on his white couch in the sunbeam, when he returned from the lab a few days later.

"Mr Xavier," the burglar said, helping himself to Charles' pricey whiskey. "Welcome home."

The robbery didn't bother Charles overmuch. The robber? Unbelievably so.


End file.
